PhoneDock 0.2.6

PhoneDock 0.2.6 keeps your agents' copy of the PhoneDock skill up to date.

• The skill updates with the app. Until now an update reached the tools agents use, but not their copy of the PhoneDock skill, so agents kept reading the old instructions until you clicked Set Up again. Now PhoneDock updates the copies it installed the first time it starts after an update. Files you edited stay as you left them, and PhoneDock never adds the skill to an agent you didn't set up.

Coming from 0.2.4 or earlier? This update also gives your agents the skill text for 0.2.5's per-app notes, with no need to run Set Up again.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.5

PhoneDock 0.2.5 lets your agents learn an app once, and makes new iOS simulators a normal iPhone again.

• Agents remember apps. The first time an agent drives an app it has to find its way around. Now, after the task, it saves short notes: how to reach the key screens, which labels to tap, the popups and quirks it ran into. The next agent that opens the app reads them first and starts from there. Notes are one Markdown file per app on your Mac, shared by all your agents, and they never include passwords or personal data. Agents use the new app_notes tool; you can read, edit or delete notes with phonedock app-notes.
• New simulators are a normal iPhone again. Xcode 27.2 added a second iOS 27.2 runtime that runs only the two-screen iPhone Duo, and PhoneDock created new simulators with it, so their screenshots failed. New simulators are an iPhone 18 Pro again, and asking for a specific model works.

If you connected an agent before this version, its MCP tools update on their own. To get the updated skill too, open Connect an Agent and click Set Up again.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.4

PhoneDock 0.2.4 makes updates complete: after you click Update, the background service restarts on the new version too.

• The background service updates with the app. Before, the relaunched app kept talking to the service the old version had started, so new features (like 0.2.3's device settings) didn't work until you restarted the service or your Mac. Now the app notices a service left over from its previous version and replaces it right after the update. Services you started yourself from a terminal or a source checkout are left alone.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.3

PhoneDock 0.2.3 adds device settings, so you can test your app in dark mode, at big text sizes and with higher contrast without digging through the Settings app.

• Device Settings in the inspector. Switch Light/Dark, move the Text Size slider (up to the largest accessibility size, or back to Default), and turn on Increase Contrast on iOS simulators and Android. Android also has Bold Text and Reduce Motion. Changes apply right away, and the panel shows what the device reports back.
• For agents. The new device_settings MCP tool, phonedock settings <id> textSize=largest appearance=dark, GET/POST /v1/devices/:id/settings (plus /settings/reset), the TypeScript and Python SDKs, and a settings step in flows all do the same thing in one call. Reduce Motion on Android remembers your animation speeds and puts them back when you turn it off.
• A real iPhone doesn't allow these changes, so the panel says so instead of showing controls. VoiceOver and TalkBack are left out on purpose: a screen reader changes what a tap does, which would stop the agent's own taps from working.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.2

PhoneDock 0.2.2 takes iPhones on iOS 27 or later out of beta.

• iPhone on iOS 27 or later is fully supported. It connects directly over USB or Wi-Fi, with nothing installed on
  the phone: live video at up to 60 fps, tap, swipe, typing, the UI tree, the clipboard, screen recording and crash
  reports. The Beta label now appears only on iPhones on iOS 26 and earlier, which still go through WebDriverAgent.

On a real iPhone, iOS doesn't let PhoneDock switch light/dark mode, rotate the phone, read app logs or tell which app
is in front, and only one app at a time can show the phone's screen. The
iPhone guide has the details.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.1

PhoneDock 0.2.1 has a new app icon.

• New icon. Two phones on an indigo squircle: a dimmed one behind, and the live one in front with the agent's
  sparkle on its screen. At small sizes, such as in Finder lists, it uses a simpler drawing so it stays readable.

Nothing else changed since 0.2.0. Copies of 0.2.0 offer this update at the bottom of the sidebar.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.2.0

PhoneDock 0.2.0 makes the live view smooth and keeps PhoneDock up to date by itself.

Highlights

• Live video at up to 60 fps. The app now plays each phone's own video stream, decoded in hardware, instead of
  fetching one picture after another. Android emulators and phones use H.264. iPhones on iOS 27 use the phone's own
  HEVC stream, with nothing re-encoded: about 58 frames a second while scrolling, over Wi-Fi.
• Automatic updates. From this version on, PhoneDock checks for new releases and installs them in one click from
  the bottom of the sidebar (Settings › General › Updates). Each update is EdDSA-signed and must carry the same
  Developer ID team. 0.1.0 can't update itself: download this version once by hand.
• One-step agent setup. phonedock setup connects Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Pi, and installs the phonedock
  agent skill.

New

• Clipboard: read and set it on Android, iOS simulators and iOS 27 iPhones (CLI, MCP clipboard, SDKs).
• Flows: save an agent session as a YAML regression test, run it with phonedock test (JUnit output, artifacts on
  failure) and export it to Maestro.
• Performance traces: start one, drive the flow, then read hangs and hot spots (xctrace on iOS, Perfetto on Android).
• Android over Wi-Fi: find nearby phones, pair with just the code, and get a Local Network diagnosis.
• Rotation: landscape live view and input on Android and iOS simulators.
• Hand Back returns the device to the agent, and you can answer handoff notifications directly.
• A redesigned Settings window.

Better for agents

• A locked iPhone refuses taps, swipes and typing with device_locked, so the agent asks you instead of tapping blind.
• Tap by ref finds the element again before tapping, and refuses when it can't tell two apart.
• OCR taps the matched words, not the middle of the line.
• Agents are told that text on the screen is data, not instructions.
• Typing emoji and other non-ASCII text works on Android phones.

Fixes

• Android phones over Wi-Fi now stream video. Before, they fell back to slow screenshots.

Requires macOS 15 or later on Apple silicon. The DMG is signed and notarized; SHA256SUMS.txt lists the checksums.

PhoneDock 0.1.0

The first public release of PhoneDock, a free Mac app that lets coding agents like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor and Pi use Android emulators, iOS simulators and real phones. You watch every screen live in one window, and you can take over at any point.

Install

1. Download PhoneDock-0.1.0.dmg below and drag PhoneDock into Applications. It's signed and notarized.
2. Open it, then run phonedock setup (or use Connect an Agent… in the app). It connects PhoneDock to the agents you have installed.
3. Start a fresh agent session and ask it something like: "Use PhoneDock to create an iPhone simulator, open Settings and turn on Dark Mode."

You need a Mac with Apple silicon on macOS 15 or later. iPhone simulators need Xcode, and Android emulators need the Android SDK. The app tells you what's missing and gives you the command that fixes it.

What's in it

• An MCP server with tools to read the screen as text, tap things by name, type, swipe, wait for a screen and check the result.
• Android emulators, iOS simulators, Android phones over USB or Wi-Fi, and iPhones on iOS 27 over Wi-Fi (beta, nothing to install on the phone).
• Handoff: at a password, Face ID or a CAPTCHA, the agent asks you. You click Take Over, do that part, click Done, and it carries on.
• Flows: save what the agent did as a YAML test, and run it in CI with phonedock test (JUnit output, a screenshot on every failure, Maestro export).
• Performance traces with Instruments on iOS and Perfetto on Android.
• A CLI, and TypeScript and Python SDKs.

Known limits

• Mac only, Apple silicon only.
• Real iPhone support is beta. On iOS 26 and older you also need WebDriverAgent on the phone.
• On iOS 27 only one app can show an iPhone's screen at a time, so close Xcode's device window or iPhone Mirroring first.
• Your agent's model provider sees the screenshots and screen text it reads.

If something breaks on your setup, open an issue and say what you were trying to do.